As scuba diving
evolved in the 1940s and 1950s from a commercial
and military activity into a recreational sport,
it was dominated by young males, offering little
encouragement to women to participate. There
were, however, some notable exceptions such as
Zale Parry, star of Sea Hunt and a
record-setting deep diver in the 1950s; Dr.
Sylvia Earle, a deep-sea oceanographer; Lotte
Hass, one of the first underwater photographers,
nicknamed the "First Lady of Diving"; Dottie
Frazier, the first female scuba instructor in
the US in the 1950s; Dr. Eugenie Clark, a
renowned marine biologist and shark expert;
Valerie Taylor, an underwater photographer and
videographer who starred in the documentary film
Blue Water, White Death and who tested
mesh suits for shark bite protection; Fran Garr,
who became the first female PADI Master
Instructor in the 1960s and was one of the first
instructors to train New York City Fire
Department rescue teams; and legendary wreck
diver, Evelyn Dudas (the first woman to dive the
Andrea Doria) who could not find a wet
suit made for women in the 1960s, so she
designed and sold her own line of wet suits.

These pioneers
of women's diving were not trying to break
barriers or make political statements. They
succeeded in the "men only" world of diving
because they loved diving, and they did it
brilliantly. Eugenie Clark, for example,
remembers the day she first told her parents she
wanted to be an aquanaut. "I was eight years old
and had just made my first visit to the Brooklyn
Aquarium in New York, USA, and I was fascinated
by a film about noted American
naturalist/author/scientist William Beebe. My
parents said, 'Women can't be aquanauts. Maybe
if you take up typing in high school, one day
you can become a secretary to an aquanaut.' I
just couldn't accept that!"

Consciously or
not, female scuba divers of the 1950s and 1960s
opened a door through which many others
followed. In the following decade, more and more
women divers began to successfully embrace
diving as a career. The last 30 years have seen
a steady growth of women entering scuba diving,
both for recreational and professional purposes.
Each year, women make up about 25-30 percent of
all newly certified divers. The topic of women
in diving, therefore, is of increasing relevance
to professionals who train divers, to medical
experts who evaluate and treat divers and to the
dive public.

In the early
days of diving, a number of widely held beliefs
discouraged and/or disqualified women from
diving and from piloting aircraft. The issues in
contention were: Less upper body strength, less
aerobic capacity, higher risk of the bends,
hormonal differences (particularly in the case
of women taking estrogen-laden oral
contraceptives) and pregnancy. In the 1970s,
there were many erroneous anecdotal surveys,
flawed and/or conflicting data, and not enough
human studies to address these issues. Sylvia
Earle, who led the all-female National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Tektite
saturation project in the early 1970s, noted
that female aquanauts were ordered to
discontinue birth control pills at least three
weeks prior to diving. "But, in those days,
everything was different," recalls Earle.
"Female aquanauts were referred to as 'Aqua
Naughties.'"

Ironically, up
until the 1990s, almost all medical studies used
to determine women's fitness to dive were
conducted by men and used male subjects. This is
not as surprising as it may appear, since
funding for medical studies came primarily from
the military and the commercial dive industries.
In the last decade, offshore oil exploration
diminished and many militaries now use
submersibles and robots for underwater
exploration. Therefore, funding for dive medical
research from these entities has all but ceased.
The only significant dive medical research today
is conducted by the Divers Alert Network (DAN)
in Durham, North Carolina, USA, and funding for
DAN's research relies heavily on memberships and
donations, thereby limiting the scope of its
research. Therefore, we may never have
definitive answers to all the medical issues
concerning women and diving.

Fortunately,
most of the myths and misconceptions about
women's physiological fitness to dive were laid
to rest by the 1990s. Most medical experts now
agree that depending on the individual woman's
goals and motivation, outstanding levels of
physical fitness are entirely achievable. In the
21st century, an era in which female athletes
routinely bring home Olympic gold medals and set
records in grueling sporting events, it would be
naive to think otherwise. Although smaller women
may have less upper body strength than larger
male counterparts, dive safety and performance
depends more on overall fitness, proper
training, well-fitting equipment and responsible
dive practices. As noted commercial diver Bunny
Key has said, "It takes brains, not bulging
biceps to move a 180 kilogram/400 pound flange
underwater." Therefore, all divers should
consider increasing their fitness levels to
maximize overall dive performance and safety to
be fully prepared for unexpected and strenuous
dive situations. An excellent program is one
that combines a high energy/low fat diet,
regular weight training and cardiovascular
exercise (i.e., running, stair climbing,
bicycling, swimming etc.).

The most recent
medical studies have also denounced the theory
that women are more susceptible to decompression
illness (DCI) than male divers. After several
decades of animal and human research and
anecdotal reports, researchers now believe that
DCI is the result of a complex set of
physiological and environmental factors—and
gender is not one of those factors. Nor are oral
contraceptives, although the effects of estrogen
in birth control devices and hormone replacement
therapies are being studied further. (In the
1970s, it was believed that estrogen caused
clotting that would lead to DCI. This theory was
later overturned and the only applicable
advisory for women divers who take estrogen now
is if they are over 35, smoke and have a family
history of coronary disease.) Currently, the
only taboo for women divers is no diving during
pregnancy. Diving while pregnant may endanger
the fetus because if excess bubbles, which are
not outgassed following a dive, enter the fetus'
circulation, they may cause a fatal arterial gas
embolism. So, other than not diving during
pregnancy, there are, in fact, no
contraindications specifically for women divers,
assuming they are fit and in overall good
health.

In addition to
the long-standing physiological myths and
misconceptions, women divers have also had to
navigate rough seas when it came to the
logistics of diving. For example, finding
comfortable dive equipment. Traditionally, dive
equipment was designed to be worn by commercial
divers or those in the military, i.e., large,
black rubber dive gear, take it or leave it. In
the 1980s, however, the growing number of women
entering recreational diving, as well as the age
range, education and financial status of these
women divers made it apparent to the dive
industry that women made up a substantial
percentage of the market and, as such, attention
should be paid.

To accommodate
this potentially lucrative women diver market,
the 1980s saw a surge of brightly colored dive
equipment and a slew of magazine and television
ads in which women were shown stylishly dressed
to take the plunge. Small and extra small-sized
BCDs, masks that fit even the most petite of
faces, wet suits designed to accommodate female
contours, lightweight fins and even smaller
scuba tanks became widely available. Ironically,
as the last vestige of scuba's traditional macho
male image gave way to a cavalcade of neon
colors, many serious women divers, i.e., wreck
divers, cave divers, cold water scuba
instructors, rescue divers, etc., still
preferred to wear basic black. As it turns out,
what many women divers had really wanted was not
necessarily lime green and hot pink gear, but
rather high quality equipment that fit!

Even while
equipment manufacturers and certification
organizations were pursuing the growing
population of women divers, women who sought
professional careers in diving still had to
contend with the proverbial "glass ceiling",
i.e., they did not receive equal pay and
promotions compared to male counterparts. It was
during the 1990s that salary discrepancies
between male and female dive instructors and
dive guides began to diminish. Women also found
unlimited opportunities in dive medicine and
science, as well as in other dive-related
fields. Dr. Karen Van Hoesen, who works in the
emergency medicine department at the University
of California at San Diego (UCSD), California,
USA, remembers receiving a warm welcome when she
entered the field of dive medicine in the 1980s.
While attending medical school at Duke
University in North Carolina, USA, Van Hoesen
worked with the staff at DAN, which increased
her interest in hyperbaric medicine and said she
had no trouble finding mentors and support
amongst her male colleagues. "The field is still
wide open for women," she reports.

Some of the
best career opportunities for women divers today
are found in the military, a far cry from the
1960s, when the term, "woman diver," was
nonexistent. When Donna Tobias applied to the US
Navy's dive school in 1974, she was told, "Women
don't do this." Still, she kept on and was
eventually told that the only possible opening
was the Navy's Deep Sea (Hard Hat) Diving
School, take it or leave it. Throughout her deep
sea dive training, Tobias, a slender but wiry
woman of medium height, had to handle some 90
kilograms/200 pounds of gear, including a Mark V
metal dive helmet, weighted boots and heavy
canvas suit. She dove in pitch-black, icy, often
turbulent water, surrounded by men, some of whom
were supportive and many more who resented her
"invasion." "If you ever uttered the words, 'I
quit,' you could never take them back, and there
were plenty of eyes waiting to see me fail,"
says Tobias. "But that just fed my intentions to
finish the course. I didn't want them asking
less of women, ever, for anything." Tobias
toughed it out, and, in 1975, she became the
first woman to graduate from the US Navy's Deep
Sea Diving School.

Thanks to
pioneers like Tobias, the US Navy eventually
relaxed its stance on women and diving and, in
addition, now assigns pay and rank solely on
merit. For example, during the 1990s, Captain
Marie Knafelc, MD, PhD advanced to become the
highest ranking medical officer at the Navy
Experimental Dive Unit in Panama City, Florida,
USA, and Commander Karen Kohanowich was recently
promoted to the position of Ocean Resources and
International Programs Advisor to the Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, Installations and
Environment. Commander Bobbie Scholley, a US
Navy Diving Salvage Officer since 1983, was the
commanding dive officer assigned to the TWA
Flight 800 crash search and recovery operation
in July 1996, and was the US Navy's first female
supervisor of diving. Commander Scholley is also
the first woman to take command of a US Navy
Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit in the Atlantic
Fleet.

Although there
were many accomplishments and success stories of
professional women divers throughout the 1980s
and 1990s, they were, for the most part,
isolated events. In 1999, however, women's
status in the global dive community took a giant
leap forward, with the founding of the Women
Divers Hall of Fame (WDHOF). With its insignia
of a woman diver proudly holding up a torch, the
WDHOF was the first organization dedicated to
bringing public awareness to the contributions
of outstanding women divers, and to offering
financial, mentoring and educational support for
women divers around the world. The WDHOF was
founded jointly by Beneath the Sea, Inc., the
Underwater Society of America, Women
Underwater ezine, Women's Scuba Association
and Hillary Viders, PhD. WDHOF was incorporated
in 2001, and currently has 119 Members, from
Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe, Australia
and the United States. The Members of WDHOF, a
multidisciplinary nonprofit organization,
include pioneers, innovators and leaders in
every field of diving: Arts and science, dive
medicine, dive training and education, undersea
exploration, marine environment and
conservation, free diving, business, media,
commercial diving and military diving. WDHOF
Members include diving's reigning
celebrities—Sylvia Earle, Zale Parry, Eugenie
Clark, Cathy Church, Evie Dudas, Betsy Royal
(vice president of Mares Corp.) and free-diving
world champions Tanya Streeter and Meghan
Heaney-Grier—but also many lesser known heroes
from many countries and sectors whose work has
made diving safer and more enjoyable for all
divers.

In a nod
towards the future, in March 2002, WDHOF
launched its WDHOF Scholarship Program, which
consists of five different annual scholarships.
The WDHOF Scholarship Program administers awards
totaling several thousand dollars worth of cash,
educational materials, internships and training
programs to women of all levels of diving and
marine science, particularly those considering
careers in diving. Kathy Weydig, WDHOF president
explains, "Our goal is to use the wealth of
resources within our membership to give
something back to the dive community which has
so enriched our own lives."

Until recently,
no one could have imagined such a large
population of recreational and professional
women divers or the camaraderie that exists
among them. In 2001, women made up about one
third of all new divers and that number will
undoubtedly continue to grow, as will the
opportunities for upper-echelon dive careers for
women. Thanks to advances in equipment and dive
training, and with the support of WDHOF, the
path for future women divers is a much smoother
one than the rocky road their predecessors
traveled during the last 60 years.

For information
about WDHOF members, scholarships, membership
applications and events, email WDHOF at
wdhof@wdhof.org
or visit the website at
www.wdhof.org.

Note: At the
time of this writing, the Italian government had
awarded the WDHOF a silver cup and plaque in
recognition of the organization's global effect
on diving.